Bamboo Fly Rods at Cressy Cane 2023 - image by Callum Ross
Contemporary Makers
Bamboo fly rod making in Australia is currently defined by a small group of makers who are involved in both making and teaching how to make bamboo fly rods, ensuring continuity of the craft through sharing knowledge and experience. David Hemmings, Callum Ross and Nick Taransky, probably the best known as Australasia’s only full-time maker, all make exemplary rods. Biographies and bamboo fly rods made by David Hemmings, Callum Ross and Nick Taransky have been documented in detail as part of the research.
If there is a differentiating thread running through today’s Australian bamboo rod makers, we think it’s collaboration and the sharing of knowledge and experience, both with each other and with makers world-wide. Cressy Cane has been an important facilitator, its gatherings enhanced by the contributions of the makers Jeff Wagner from the US, Canada’s Bob Clay and Japan’s Naoto Shibuya.
No longer do aspiring rod makers have to begin, as Callum Ross did, effectively in a vacuum. Thanks to the Internet there is a village ready to help them. In Australia the village is growing, in addition to the established makers linked through Cressy Cane. We hope that this modest history will assist all contemporary Australian bamboo fly rods makers, by providing an anchor to the Australian bamboo rod makers of the past.
We would welcome feedback, corrections and, above all, new information, about past and present makers and their rods. Then it will be both a history and an evolving story.
With the present era we are departing from a history and entering an evolving narrative. What we write now about a selection of today’s rod makers will be overtaken, as it should, both by new developments in their journey and by additional makers who are not necessarily new to the craft, just new to us, and we hope that in time their stories can be added to our narrative.
We have begun this tale of the modern era with three makers, David Hemmings, Callum Ross and Nick Taransky.